C++ trying to swap values in a vector

Question

This is my swap function:

template 
void swap (t& x, t& y)
{
    t temp = x;
    x = y;
    y = temp;
    return;
}

Answer 1

There is a std::swap in <algorithm>

Answer 2

I think what you are looking for is iter_swap which you can find also in <algorithm>.
all you need to do is just pass two iterators each pointing at one of the elements you want to exchange.
since you have the position of the two elements, you can do something like this:

// assuming your vector is called v
iter_swap(v.begin() + position, v.begin() + next_position);
// position, next_position are the indices of the elements you want to swap

Answer 3

after passing the vector by reference

swap(vector[position],vector[otherPosition]);

will produce the expected result.

Answer 4

Both proposed possibilities (std::swap and std::iter_swap) work, they just have a slightly different syntax. Let's swap a vector's first and second element, v[0] and v[1].

We can swap based on the objects contents:

std::swap(v[0],v[1]);

Or swap based on the underlying iterator:

std::iter_swap(v.begin(),v.begin()+1);

Try it:

int main() {
  int arr[] = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9};
  std::vector<int> * v = new std::vector<int>(arr, arr + sizeof(arr) / sizeof(arr[0]));
  // put one of the above swap lines here
  // ..
  for (std::vector<int>::iterator i=v->begin(); i!=v->end(); i++)
    std::cout << *i << " ";
  std::cout << std::endl;
}

Both times you get the first two elements swapped:

2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9